Heterodoxy: An Almost Concept

Abstract

This study seeks to summarize Eduardo Lourenço’s conceptualization of Heterodoxy at various moments: first as any alternative to orthodoxies, then as a spirit or attitude of evasion, then as a supplementation and a process of detecting totalizing or crystallizing elements in philosophical, cultural and ideological thought. Accordingly, dialectics is assumed as a display of contradictions without solubility, pointing to a tragic attitude. For Lourenço, the essay, following Montaigne, is the literary form best suited to deal with the plurality of reality and culture, irreducible to any form of totality or unification. I suggest the need to include Lourenço’s heterodoxy in the history of Portuguese perspectives about the essay as an historical and literary genre. Further exploration would be necessary to place this notion in the history of criticism as an extension of the literary text or as a form of applying philosophical hermeneutics.